Beyond Respectability - Black Women's Intellectual History
Walk the halls of many scholarly conferences, you hear that historical knowledge production is decidedly White and male. While expanded to include discourse regarding the relevance of Booker T. Washington versus W.E.B. DuBois, for example, many scholars still remain consistently ignorant regarding the intellectual contributions of Black women. These thinkers include but are not limited to: Maria Stewart (1831), Laura Simmes (1864) and Linda Brent (1861).
One of the most significant contributions to this overlooked body of scholarship is Brittney Cooper's book, Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women. The title itself plays upon the "respectability politics" and the need to overcome these traditional approaches from middle and upperclass Black women after Emancipation. The enclosed video provides you with additional insights directly from the author. We hope you will enjoy this.
The Misogynoir to Mishpat (M2M) Research Network © 2024
Resources:
Fraser, Rebecca. ‘I must speak, I must think, I must act.’ [Laura Simmes, 1864] the Christian Recorder, literary activism, and the black female intellectual, A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies, vol 39, no. 4, 2018
Fraser, Rebecca. Black Female Intellectuals in Nineteenth Century America: Born to Bloom Unseen? Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2023
Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861
Stewart, Maria. Religion and the Pure Principles of Morality, 1831